How Do We Destroy Capitalism?

How Do We Destroy Capitalism?

Editor’s note: this is an edited transcript of a talk at the 2014 Earth at Risk capitalism and sociopathy panel.  View the video here.

     by Stephanie McMillan, Derrick Jensen, and Charles Derber



Stephanie McMillan:
Thank you for being determined to investigate and understand the different aspects of this catastrophic situation that we are facing. Especially I want to thank those of you here who are doing something about it, or thinking about doing something about it. It is very important that we do. I am going to get into some of the more structural aspects.


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We all know that capitalism is killing the world. In order to stop it, we can’t just keep resisting its effects. Capitalism doesn’t care if we protest on street corners a thousand times. That just proves how democratic they are. The solutions are not to be found within its framework. And they are even less to be found at the individual level. We don‘t actually have any power as consumers, I‘m sure most of you here already know. They would like us to think we do, but we can‘t buy or refrain from buying our way out of this. It‘s a social system, a class system, and it can only be addressed at a level of collective organized class struggle.

We need to understand capital, how it works, the mechanisms that keep it in place and are at the core of its functioning.

Capitalism is a mode of production, based on the exploitation of labor and the generation of surplus value. This means that workers are paid a certain amount of wages for a day‘s work. But what they produce is worth more than that. The extra value is called surplus value, and the capitalist just steals it. This is what all profit is based on. This is what private property is all about. It is considered normal for the social means of production, the factories, land, everything that produces all the things that we all use, that these are privately owned, and for those owners to simply take whatever is produced in them.

Understanding capitalism.

Capitalism is not just an economic process, but the whole way that our society is arranged.  It’s an ensemble or matrix of social relations, and these comprise three main fields: the economic, the political and the ideological. The economic field is determinate, profit is the point, and everything else is set up to solidify the relations of production that keep it coming. Capitalist ideology, centered on competition and individualism, is designed to make the way we live seem normal and inevitable. It‘s forced on us by its institutions, school, the church, the nuclear family, media and culture. Why would we need advertising for example, if they didn‘t need to convince us to participate? Ideological domination is unrelenting conditioning and indoctrination to naturalize capitalism, to make us compliant, passive, greedy and self-centered. To make us identify with it, instead of understanding it as the enemy that it really is.

Political domination.

Political domination, the job of the state, has two main aims: the first, performed by the government and its laws, is to regulate  within and between classes, to keep the flow of capital smooth and free of obstacles. The second is for when ideological domination fails. When we can no longer accept living this way, the state turns to cohesion through terrorism. This function is performed by the state’s armed forces, its military and police. If we don‘t comply, that’s when the guns come out. We saw that with the Occupy movement. The entire purpose of this setup is economic, the accumulation of wealth for a small minority of people–those who own the means of production, namely the factories, tools, land.

Ownership and control.

This ownership was not ordained by a God, nor is it because capitalists are smarter or worked harder than anyone else and earned that right. It‘s because they took it. They started with trading, which many societies considered and understood as thievery, since it‘s the exchange of unequal values. This is still the way that mercantile capitalists accumulate wealth. They continued with land theft, backed up by war and genocide, which is still going on today as we all know. I just got back from Haiti a few days ago and saw huge areas of land that have been stolen from small farmers and towns people, their houses just bulldozed over without warning, so that the government could bring in foreign investors to build industrial parks and tourist resorts. They justified this by saying that the people will get jobs. They‘d be able to work in the new factories and hotels. That‘s the standard way that capitalists have been getting their workforce for the past 250 years.

Oppression and control.

The fundamental contradiction of capitalism, reproducing it and driving it forward, is capital versus labor and the production of surplus value for private accumulation. This process is what produces class divisions, class domination and class struggle. Classes are groups of people, defined by their role in social production. There are those who own and control it, and those are usually not the same people who are exploited in the process. Besides exploitation, capitalism also uses oppressive practices like racism and patriarchy, and has terrible effects like ecocides and war, which we all have to deal with. It‘s a social system that dominates all of social life, and all the dominated classes and social groups struggle against this in their own ways. But the core of it is embodied in the struggle of workers against exploitation.

Value and ethics.

Workers are the ones who face capital in their daily struggle for existence, in an inherently antagonistic relationship. They are the only ones able to offer an alternative to capitalism. Other classes can resist, but can‘t break the framework. So, if we‘re to actually destroy capitalism, the working class needs to lead all the dominated classes in a revolution to overthrow the capitalist class. We are all social agents, born into a structure that we didn‘t create. We are inserted into the existing relations of production, funneled into particular social slots, serving the various requirements of capital. Capital confines our relationships within a framework of relations between things. And it treats living beings, including humans, as objects. It has no moral or ethical framework, because it‘s not alive.

Nevertheless, it does have a motion, drive and imperative of its own. Its only aim is self-expansion. Even capitalists are merely stewards of capital and have no control over it. If they have an attack of conscience, an attempt to moderate it, then they are replaced. Sociopaths are drawn to this role; in fact a higher percentage are found in this class than in the general population. Because to serve capital in this way requires a lack, or total suppression, of empathy. Capital has no subjectivity and it doesn’t recognize it in others. But it is animate, thorough and embodied in its representatives. It has imbued them with its own sociopathy.

Value and growth.

Surplus value is generated only in industrial production, when labor power is exploited in the process of converting raw materials, otherwise known as the living world, into commodities. And that‘s why it‘s ecocidal. Other forms of capital expansion, such as mercantile and finance, create inflated bubbles of fictitious value through unequal trade and speculation. All that must be based on the production of physical goods. For example, China builds twelve to twenty-four ghost-cities every year, mile after mile of malls with no businesses in them and houses with no people living in them. And those empty buildings serve as repositories for capital investment, objects to hold value and to speculate on. Surplus value must be re-invested as new capital, or it will degrade, it will lose value.

We have a choice.

Capital will do whatever it takes to prevent its own devaluation, including all forms of brutal oppression, endless wars, total disregard for the needs of any living beings, stripping us of subjectivity, and turning us into functions for its own reproduction, even up to annihilation of all life on earth. This would of course mean its own destruction as well. Marx understood this when he said that class struggle will lead to either the overthrow of capitalism and the elimination of class domination in general, or the common ruin of contending classes. We still may have this choice to make, but that window is closing. We each need to make our choice now, and do the work required of us in this very intense and pivotal historical period.

The work of understanding the structural crisis and vulnerabilities of the system that we‘re facing, plus the work of organizing our forces so that we can become strong enough to weaken and ultimately destroy it.

Derrick Jensen:
For eight years, Stephanie and I have had a bitter, bitter ideological battle. It‘s so bitter that we‘ve written a couple of books together and have become very dear friends. The question, that Stephanie and I have been having a great time slightly disagreeing on, is whether capitalism creates sociopathological behavior, or whether it took sociopaths to create a rationalization for their pre-existing issues, and to create a system that rewards this terrible behavior. And I don‘t really have an answer and I think the truth is, that they are mutually reinforcing, that once you get a system in place that starts creating sociopaths, then they will create additional rationalizations for their sociopathological behavior and additional ways to reward themselves. Especially when those in power are those who make the rules for those in power, then of course they‘re going to codify their pre-existing issues.

The tragedy of the commons.

I want to say one more thing. The tragedy of the commons just pisses me off. That essay by Garrett Hardin in 1968, it’s such a lie. He basically says that the tragedy of the commons is that if you have a common area, that it will eventually be destroyed. He says this is because if you have a community area where the village is allowed to, say, run a hundred sheep, ten families and every family can run ten sheep.  Then what‘s going to happen is that one family is going to run eleven sheep, and then another is gonna run eleven sheep, and then eventually the commons will be destroyed. But this is complete bullshit. What that is, is a tragedy of the failure of community.

If you have a community, and everybody knows that they can run ten sheep, if somebody runs eleven sheep, the other members of the community come to them and say: Dude, that is not a good idea. And if the person does it again, they’d say: Dude, that‘s a really bad idea. And if they did it again, they‘d burn down their house. So, what he is describing is a situation in which your community has already been destroyed.

No matter how talented he was, if Jimi Hendrix would have been playing his music in the 1920s he would not have found an audience. You have to have a receptive audience in order to have something become popular. So if you have a purely functioning community in the first place, and somebody says “Hey, I‘ve got this great idea! Everybody acting selfishly will create a greater good for our entire community!” they would say “You are nuts.” The only way you can have people go “wow, that’s a great idea!” is if they are primed for it.

Spreading ideas/propaganda.

In 1992, the year that Clinton was elected, he did this one speech that had this great moment where he said “I want to try to show that Adam Smith‘s invisible hand has a green thumb.” It was great, because the entire audience was silent. And then he said: “I thought that was a really good line,” and everybody is like “Oh, yeah!“ This is just one of the ways that propaganda works. First, and everybody knows this, is: “Adam Smith‘s invisible hand? A green thumb? You‘re fucking nuts!” But then when it‘s repeated, and of course if you have the NY Times take it up, and then if you have the neo-environmentalists take it up, and then if you have all these other groups take it up, twenty years later, everybody‘s like “Oh yeah, of course green capitalism will solve everything.”
That‘s all.

Charles Derber:
95% of environmentalists in America believe that the solution to the environmental crisis is more capitalism. I had the quote from Tom Friedman, who made that argument very powerfully. He said there is “father capital and mother earth.” The two most powerful forces in the world to be married together will solve all our problems. Why this text is super important is that you‘re going up against a myth, a deeply embedded myth in the society. That the solution to climate change is more capitalism.

Derrick Jensen:
I would actually agree, that there is father capitalism and mother earth, and it‘s a deeply abusive relationship in which he is beating the shit out of her and raping her on a daily basis, and what she needs to do is put a gun to his fucking head and kill him.

Stephanie McMillan:
There is really no way to reform it or fix it. It is not a system that has gone too far or that has run off the rails. The rails are constructed that way, the whole system is born that way. It’s not something that can be restrained or reformed or fixed. It is not broken. It‘s doing exactly what has been predicted for the last 200 years.

The accumulation of capital is an inevitable process.

The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the monopolization of production, that‘s all part of how it works. And the only way that it can be gotten rid off is if we organize and become a powerful social force, more powerful than the lies, wealth and arms of our enemy. We have to first recognize it as our enemy. A lot of people don’t, because we are ideologically very dominated, and we’ve been conditioned for generations to accept this as normal.

Working together.

The propaganda that there is no alternative, that everything else has failed, that nothing else will work, this is our only choice—we have to break out of that. Yes, there have been attempts at other systems that have failed. But these were babies, trying to learn how to walk. And if they fell down, are we going to say “this baby is never gonna grow up and learn how to walk?” We have to learn from the mistakes of people who have tried different things, modify that according to our current situation, and collectively figure out a different way to live. We evolved as collective beings. We are not like this. This capitalist society has turned us into unsocial creatures, but we are social creatures, we are cooperative. This is our nature.

Organizing.

We have to organize and collectively build a movement, a mass movement that is strong enough, that is led by a politicized, revolutionary working class, and overthrow them. Take over. Take over the political system, get rid of it and institute our own, which is going to be built in the process of the revolutionary struggle; and we need to take over the means of production and convert it to—instead of profit—human needs that are in line with the requirements of the natural world. That is not an impossible dream. That is something that we would naturally do, if we weren’t being prevented by a class of people who controls everything and enforces that control with their armed might. If we can be strong enough, organize enough to break through that arms might and control society ourselves, we can do a lot better.

It is not going to be utopia, of course. There is going to be a lot to work through in the process and afterward a lot of conflict among the people. But that’s not an antagonistic conflict; we can work it out. The real antagonism is between all of us and those few at the top, who are preventing a decent society from coming into being and who are killing us all.

Charles Derber:
The conversation we‘re having is not a conversation that‘s on the plate in the United States. You tell me, how often you have seen in the New York Times or CNN or even MSNBC, any of the mainstream media, a conversation about whether we should have or get rid of capitalism? You‘re seen as freaking crazy if you raise this question. The idea is not only that capitalism is the only good, it’s the only possible way of organizing society. That‘s the bad news. And it’s really bad, because the ideological forces of control have consolidated around this idea. It’s only in very small niches and communities where this kind of question would get on the table without being laughed off.

Community is important.

When you actually question people about what they believe, it turns out they believe that capitalism is pretty fucked up. They think that capitalism is putting money into Washington and into political processes in a way that is pretty sociopathic, they are pissed off about the bailing out of the banks, they believe that people who work in McDonalds or in nursing homes deserve a living wage, they believe that unions are good things and that community is important, and they believe in the essential need to protect the environment. So, there is a resonance. When do people become receptive to ideas?

There is a counter-culture.

The contradiction that we‘re dealing with is, on the one hand you can‘t even talk about what we‘re talking about today. Capitalism is the only reality that the ideological apparatus of the country will accept as a dialog. And in a sense, there is a resonance to that. There aren’t masses out in San Francisco even who are saying “We want to talk about class revolution or about capitalism,” who would embrace what Stephanie just said. On the other hand, when you carefully interrogate people about what it is they believe on real issues, they want healthcare, good education for their kids, to save the environment for future generations. There is a counter-resonance, a counter-culture, but it operates under the formal mechanism of politics which has become spectacle- and money-driven.

The practice of resistance.

Somehow the practice of resistance and social change has to be diving under the surface of that resonant, controlling ideology, and finding the way to speak to the parts of people’s lives that are telling them everything is wrong in the society, that we need drastic change. We have to be really smart, and I mean that in an emotional way. We have to find a way to viscerally hook into the deep discontents that people are experiencing about their lives, and about their communities, about their kids’ prospects, about their own prospects. It‘s a little bit like an abused child.

You take an abused child, and you try to pull them away from their parents, and they will run to the parent who has been kicking them, and hold on to their knees and say “Don‘t take me away!” I think the body politic in the United States is operating a little bit like that. They know that they’re being abused, and they’re holding on for dear life to the abuser. And what a resistance movement has to do is to provide a source of safety and community that will allow people to realize I can let go of that and actually get rid of it, because it has been destroying my life.

Derrick Jensen:
A lot of environmentalists begin by wanting to protect a specific piece of ground, and they end up questioning the foundation of western civilization. And that‘s because they start by asking “Why is this land being destroyed?” and then they start asking “Why would any land be destroyed?” and then they hear that the needs of the economy are in opposition to the needs of the environment and they ask “Why would you have an economic system that is in opposition to the environment?” There is that huge split between grassroots environmental activists and mainstream activists. And the split is where their fundamental loyalty is.

Grassroots Activism.

With the grassroots environmental activists, the ones that I knew and grew up with is, their emphasis is always biocentric. And the loyalty of Tom Friedman is to capitalism. I keep thinking about the line by Harriet Tubman: “I freed hundreds of slaves, but I could have freed hundreds more if only they had known they were slaves.” It‘s the same thing with capitalism. One of our jobs in this pre-revolutionary phase is to help people to articulate the understanding that they already have, that they are enslaved by the system but they don‘t yet know it, just like the slaves Harriet Tubman tried to free didn’t know it.

Connection.

Charles Derber:
The young people in the country have a feeling like what Derrick is talking about, that their connection to their world is being destroyed. At some level it is translating to an understanding, that this is a symptom of something fundamentally wrong in their way of life. That the environmental destruction and climate change, as terrible as it is, is a symptom of something even deeper. Which is the way we’ve constructed our civilization and our way of life. This is the realm of possibility. But they have to go a long way in their movement, from that very gut-level understanding to being able to articulate the connections that at some level they feel.

Stephanie McMillan:
I agree that people are discontented. They understand that something is wrong. We can‘t go out and just talk about capitalism in abstract concepts at the start. I go out a lot and talk with people, pass out flyers and stuff like that, trying to organize. I start out by saying “It’s really difficult to survive under this system, where a few people take everything and we can’t even make a living,” and everybody is like “Yeah, it‘s horrible!” And I say, “We have to organize to do something about it. We have to fight back against this!”

Building connection.

“Yeah we do!” is a very common response. How do we crush it? I talked about it in very general terms, but a lot of people really want something more concrete. There is no easy formula for it. In order to make a political change—and a revolution is a political change—we need the ideological change first. In order to have a revolution in reality, we need to be able to imagine it in our minds. Organizing people means building relationships. If you can‘t find an organization that you agree with just start one. A conversation with one person, that’s how it starts. And then you find another person, and if you can’t find one or you don’t know one, then go out in the street and start talking to people. You don’t have to have all the answers, you need to open the conversation and you need to have regular meetings.

I know people don‘t like that, but you really need them. And you need to have study, and you need to have action. And that action is widely varied. Even going out and talking to people, that‘s an action. That’s how we start. There is no easy way to do it, there is no way around the tedious work of putting yourself out there. There is no other way to do it.

Derrick Jensen:
How do we crush the system? The North won the civil war before it started. Germany lost WWII before it started. The way you win war is by destroying the enemy’s capacity to wage war. That‘s the point of war. And one of the things we need to do—well, we need to recruit first, there is like fifteen of us—but one of the things we need to do is to destroy capitalism’s ability to wage war on us and on the world. We‘re not quite there yet.

Resisting change.

One of the really big barriers to recruitment is a wonderful metaphor that somebody told me. I was asking a fisheries biologist about blowing up dams, and the fisheries biologist was saying that a flood is a natural process. Every time a river floods, it changes course. It breaks her heart, because all these fish, the frogs and the trees who were in the old channel die. But she said that‘s what rivers do, they change course all the time.

There is a phrase that just stuck with me so hard—every time a river floods there is short term habitat loss and long term habitat gain. And as soon as she said that to me I got chills, thinking Why do we stay in bad relationships? Because we are afraid of the short term loss for long term gain. Why do we stay in bad jobs? Because we are afraid of the short term loss for long term gain. I am not in any way attempting to dismiss the terror involved in the collapse of any system, which is completely dreadful. But that’s one of the biggest things that is holding us all back, because of the very real prospect of terrible short term loss in exchange for the very obvious long term gain that will be gained by getting rid of capitalism.

This is a huge, very real barrier that we face.

Strengthen Collectivity: Combat Individualism

Strengthen Collectivity: Combat Individualism

By Stephanie McMillan / One Struggle

This essay originally appeared in Idées Nouvelles Idées Prolétariennes.  Featured artwork by Stephanie McMillan

Individualism is the ideology of competition, of capitalism. It consists of prioritizing one’s perceived immediate personal interests above collective interests, and being blind to the fact that one’s long-term personal interests actually correspond to the interests of the whole. This leads people to behave in ways that are detrimental to the collective, and ultimately to each individual as well.

Under capitalism, society does not meet the needs of the people, and we are structurally prevented from meeting our needs collectively. Capitalism’s engine is competition. There is competition between classes as well as within classes. Within the working class, the capitalist system pits each person (or family) against all others in a struggle for survival.

Humans are social animals who, before agriculture arose and society was divided into classes, lived in bands. Our species evolved with a natural tendency to cooperate. But when people living under capitalism attempt to express this tendency, they are sharply discouraged. For example, when strangers spontaneously assist one another after a disaster, they are quickly dispersed and ordered to leave this task to the state.

The capitalist class holds ideological hegemony (dominance and control) over the whole society. They exert constant pressure to shape our ideas, thoughts, and emotions in ways that serve them. Therefore, unless we make a conscious contrary effort, the ideologies that serve this dominant class are spontaneously felt as “normal” or “natural.”

Individualism is a powerful ideological weapon that the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) uses to crush the subjectivity of the working class (the proletariat), and thus to prevent the potential liberation of the world from capitalist rule. Individualism is promoted and fortified by every possible cultural and economic means. We are indoctrinated from birth. Parents are compelled to teach their children to survive in the competitive framework (which they have no choice about living in) by “getting ahead,” to “look out for number one,” to put oneself in the best position possible (i.e., through education, or seeking a rich mate) to accumulate wealth for personal security.

Individualism is the ideology of the petit bourgeoisie (those who circulate capital by selling either services or goods, who tend to aspire to belong to the ruling class). It manifests itself as the striving for market power, for personal advancement, for comforts, for security and stability within the framework of the system. In contrast, proletarian ideology seeks to overturn the capitalist system and meet our needs collectively. But capitalism has been able to indoctrinate even members of the working class in petit bourgeois ways of thinking, to manipulate them into acting against their own interests, in ways that benefit capitalists instead.

Artwork by Stephanie McMillan

Artwork by Stephanie McMillan

As proletarian militants, we are no less subject to ideological domination than anyone else. The difference is that we are consciously aware of it, to varying degrees, and thus we are able to combat it. In order to fight the system, we must fight its dominant ideologies at every level: in society as a whole, in our organizations, and in our own individual hearts and minds.

This is an active and constant process of struggle. It will continue even after the ruling class has been defeated politically— we are so deeply conditioned that it may take generations to uproot their poisonous ideas. Ultimately, it will require that we construct a society (an economy, in particular) that retains no structural or social mechanism for rewarding individualism.

We should not be ashamed to discover individualism in our own hearts, or shame others for manifesting it— it is inevitable in capitalist society. Instead, the way to fight it is to bring it to light, examine it in relation to our overall political goals, and then consciously reject it (over and over again, as it will constantly re-arise).

Ideological strength requires an underpinning of political unity; these advance together. The motive for struggle on the ideological front is not to serve some abstract morality, but to achieve a specific political goal.

Individualism is not the same as individuality. Combatting individualism does not mean that everyone must be identical (which is impossible anyway) or that anyone should suppress their own thoughts, desires, or particular characteristics. On the contrary, we must recognize the value of each individual as inherent, and at the same time as it relates to the collective. Each person has specific strengths to contribute to our common work, and these should be enhanced and supported. Our weaknesses should be shared so we can help each other overcome them. We appreciate diversity and differences among us, which contribute to a dynamic social/political life, increasing our range of possibilities in action and thought. (In fact, for any motion to occur at all, in a dialectical process, differences are required, by definition). In groups, as in any aspect of the natural world, diversity ensures resilience, flexibility, adaptability, and evolution.

In order to struggle against individualism, we must recognize its manifestations. In political organizations, there are many ways that this destructive ideology materializes. They include (not exclusively) these 12 common types:

1)   Misplaced priorities. Nothing is as important and urgent as crushing capitalism. Nothing. Countless lives will continue to be destroyed until we accomplish this task. The future existence of all life on Earth is at risk as long as this system exists. Everything we do should be, in some way, in service to our cause. Of course our basic needs must be met, which beyond self-reproduction (subsisting) also include maintaining one’s health and balance (mental, emotional, physical, social and cultural). These should support and renew our capacity to contribute to revolution. Even if we eliminate frivolous activities from our lives, we still have to make difficult choices about how we spend our time, because the system keeps us very busy in our effort to survive and meet our responsibilities. (This overload is intentionally devised so we are too overwhelmed to resist). Therefore we have to constantly evaluate how much energy we give to particular activities, make correct choices even when they are painful, and order our lives in favor of the revolutionary struggle.

2)   Competition among ourselves. This can involve using one’s experience, knowledge, accomplishments, abilities or personality to gain personal power or prestige, and to repress the collective will. Instead, we should all strive to strengthen our collective democratic functioning by assisting each comrade to express her/himself, to overcome weaknesses, build strength, and maximize participation. We should struggle among ourselves within a framework of overall unity, in order to discover the truth together, and not attempt to impose one’s own will over others (whether their disagreements are verbalized or silent), or monopolize any aspect of work. Individual power without collective power is useless and can never defeat our enemy.

3)   A lack of commitment. In order to increase consumption of commodities, capitalist society obsessively pushes self-indulgence as an ideal. (“Because you’re worth it.”) It has created concepts of “comfort,” “fun” and “satisfaction” that correspond to their economic need for us to buy things. Whatever doesn’t please us in the moment, we are encouraged to abandon and replace. This leads to a market-based approach to life, including toward nature, love, spirituality, political work, and everything else. Unfortunately, political work is not comfortable, fun, and instantly gratifying in the ways that we are conditioned to desire. Instead it is challenging, complex, and requires immense persistence. When this fact is discovered, a common response is to abandon it.

4)   Laziness. Some people believe they’ve performed a great deed by joining an organization and declaring support for the cause. They stop here, congratulating themselves and posting revolutionary quotations all over Facebook. But this is like confusing the starting point in a marathon with the finish line. We can’t stand on unearned laurels, but have to run the full distance: to do the hard work of constructing theory, defining a political line, and building organizations—pushing ourselves through to victory and beyond.

5)   Passivity. Letting others always take the lead, and refusing to take initiative (once a collective approach has been decided) is an avoidance of responsibility. Each person should strive to participate and contribute to the maximum of her/his potential, to express ideas without fear, and be willing to do whatever work is necessary.

6)   Hero/martyr complex. While it’s essential to work to one’s maximum capacity and strive to increase it, it can be tempting to overestimate what one’s capacity actually is. A juggler with too many eggs will drop some of them. Similarly, taking on too many tasks and making too many commitments will result in failure to carry all of them out. Unreliability leads to uncertainty and paralysis for the other members of an organization, who have interconnected tasks that depend on one another for success. In addition, it could cause the person to burn out, rendering them totally ineffective. Instead of attempting personally to handle every task, we should help others share responsibilities. We have to accept that some tasks will not be accomplished (as well or at all) until sufficient collective capacity is built.

7)   Defensive/aggressive ego. In a collective endeavor, criticism should never be personal; thus there is no reason to be personally offended by it. We should not only be willing to listen to criticism with an open mind, but to welcome constructive criticism, and learn to evaluate our own work in the spirit of understanding our weaknesses in order to overcome them. Criticism of the work of a comrade or ally should always be offered in a constructive manner, with the intention of assisting their work. An alternative should be suggested along with it. We should not pick each other apart for every small mistake (which can be very demoralizing), but focus on fundamental issues.

8)  Self-expression. Intellectuals (especially in academia) attempt to generate novel ideas for professional or “personal branding” purposes, rather than focusing on constructing theory to concretely assist class struggle. This is theory for theory’s sake, or intellectualism. This practice converts theory into just another commodity, a gift to our enemy. The way to combat this is to produce our ideas (in whatever form) collectively. For artists, the concept of “art for art’s sake” is a way to justify creating work without political or social content. This means squandering one’s creativity and skills by offering them for the benefit of the ruling class, instead of for the working class. Intellectuals and artists should participate in other areas of political work, or they won’t fully understand their subjects.

9)   Self-esteem. Working hard is good, but not so good if there is an underlying motive of elevating one’s own social position or being the center of attention. We do not need to build our self-esteem by seeking admiration, praise and flattery. Our self-respect and sense of connection should come from being an effective social agent for our class, connected to countless others within a historical process. We should appreciate one another as comrades, and let each other know when we’re doing good work, but not be motivated by a desire for public recognition.

10)   Friend sourcing. Because of the atomization of our society, and consequent feelings of isolation, sometimes people join and use organizations as a means to alleviate loneliness, to make friends or develop relationships, whereas it should be the other way around: allowing friendships to arise from a foundation of political unity. If the personal aspect of a relationship is made primary over the political aspect, this can interfere with political functioning. Political agreement or disagreement can be falsely based on emotion. Underlying conflicts can manifest as personal attacks hidden under the guise of political disagreements, picking quarrels, harassment, or avoidance of common work because of discomfort. This creates a negative atmosphere which can sidetrack people’s attention and undermine group cohesion. There is no room for drama in political organizations. We should focus on our overall goal, and be good comrades first, friends second.

11)   Liberalism. Tolerating destructive behavior because one doesn’t like conflict or want to “rock the boat,” allows that behavior to continue and increase. Manifestations of liberalism include gossiping behind people’s backs instead of bringing up problems collectively, failing to take opportunities to assert revolutionary ideas in appropriate situations, witnessing (or being subject to) oppressive acts or speech without saying anything, failing to hold comrades accountable, supporting or attacking views based on feelings about the person expressing them, and tolerating mediocrity in our work. These all result in an unprincipled peace that can lead to group apathy.

12)   Going off the rails. The members of a revolutionary organization act only within the framework of political unity. Strength comes from disciplined collectivity, and individual initiative must be based on this foundation. Taking action as an individual in ways that have no relationship to collectively agreed-upon strategy or goals can be dangerous. For example, committing an illegal act (impulsively or from a concealed plan) without the knowledge and agreement of the collective, puts others at risk, damages collective work, and destroys mutual trust. Failing to take the safety of the organization seriously and to abide by its security protocols is inexcusable.

Everything in capitalist society is geared to stop us from organizing to fight for revolution. We feel constant pressure to cave in to individualism. We are tempted with possibilities for self-advancement if we abandon the struggle, or are threatened with the opposite if we don’t fall in line. If we insist on rejecting individualism, this can cost us our jobs. Friends may tell us we’re crazy, boring, or depressing to talk to. Our family members might tell us that we are failing in our responsibilities to them when we devote time to political work. On TV and in movies, we are given poisonous models of human behavior.

Resisting all these influences is class struggle on the ideological front. We have to keep our bearings, pick our battles wisely, and refuse to kneel down under pressure. In our organizations, we must assist one another to overcome individualism and all enemy influences.

Artwork by Stephanie McMillan

Artwork by Stephanie McMillan

Stephanie McMillan: Killing Capitalism in the Name of Self-Defense

Stephanie McMillan: Killing Capitalism in the Name of Self-Defense

By Stephanie McMillan

Global capitalism is killing the planet. It is turning the living world into dead commodities by exploiting the many for the profit of a few.

Ecocide is the most urgent and immediate problem we face. If we don’t solve it, nothing else will matter. Economic troubles (not to mention our personal issues) will seem trivial. The ability of the planet to sustain life of any kind is becoming increasingly threatened.

It may already be too late to avoid runaway global warming; and it’s certainly too late to avoid radioactive rain, shrimp without eyes in the Gulf of Mexico, and tap water that can be lit on fire. It’s too late to save 78 percent of the world’s old-growth forests or bring back the 200 species of plants and animals that went extinct today. The situation is extremely dire.

But we can’t give up – not without a fight. Precisely as the economic and ecological crises converge, the possibility of liberation and social transformation also opens up. But only if we organize to make that happen.

Ecocide is accelerating because of capitalism’s constant need to expand into new areas. Capitalists have entered a period of extreme extraction, even in areas that were previously off-limits geographically and politically. They’re now ripping up North America as wantonly as they’ve already wrecked other parts of the world, with fracking, oil from tar sands and deep-sea drilling, and mountaintop removal.

Because of competition between capitalists, which leads to a falling rate of profit, capitalism is structurally compelled to expand. It can never economically catch up with itself and must constantly break through its limits in a vain attempt to resolve its own inherent internal contradiction.

Feudalism and all forms of class society have also had internal contradictions that drove them to expand. But capitalism has taken this to a new level, because instead of just requiring more resources to continue existing (to feed an expanding agrarian population, for example), it requires the constant growth of production to expand for its own sake. The needs of the population aren’t the point, and commodities aren’t even the point – accumulating surplus value to expand capital itself is the entire point. This is what pushes it to exceed limits on a scale previously unimaginable.

But we live on a finite planet with physical limits, which are being reached. This is a difference from earlier economic crises. Capitalism is driven to consume everything external to itself, converting it to commodities, and it won’t stop doing so on its own until it kills all life on the planet. Capitalism is fundamentally in contradiction with life itself.

The system won’t stop unless we stop it.

The system has many methods of dealing with dissent. One is open repression.

Before they resort to that, they try everything else, including co-opting dissent. They draw it into dead ends created for this purpose. As long as we don’t threaten the actual relationship of power, we have many ineffective means of dissent that we’re permitted to exercise.

But capitalism can’t be reasoned with, escaped, reformed, redeemed, cajoled, abandoned, or rejected. It does not care what we want or how persuasively (or how nicely, or how rudely) we request it.

Elections won’t change this. “Less evil” politicians still serve and represent capitalist interests. It’s their job.

Personal lifestyle changes, though nice, will not make it stop. Protests and demonstrations won’t make it stop.

A better-regulated or reformed capitalism would still kill the planet. So-called “green” capitalism and technotopianism are lies to make us believe an expansionist economy could be sustainable. We can’t buy our way out of it.

If we are to liberate ourselves from this horror – if we are even to survive – we must work together to fight global capitalism and its crimes, toward the ultimate goal of bringing it down.

The system has been built on land theft, war, and slavery. It steals the means of subsistence from indigenous populations and small farmers, putting everyone in a situation of dependency, forced to sell our labor to get food and shelter.

A system based on the pursuit of profit and perpetual expansion can never be fair or sustainable. We need to study and analyze its mechanisms and motion, and identify its weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

We can attack it on many fronts, but at the center of it is the conversion of raw materials (life) into commodities through the capitalist exploitation of labor. The point is the creation of surplus value (profit) by the worker, which the capitalist appropriates – in other words, steals. There is no other reason for commodities to be produced.

To end this nightmare, workers will have to organize to liberate themselves. They are the only ones who can break the social relation of class domination, a relation that is at the core of a mode of production that requires the extraction of resources and the exploitation of workers, and results in the destruction of the environment.

In addition, we must build organizations of various types that bring to bear the energy and interests of all the popular classes and social groupings to weaken capitalism. As the crises become more acute and affect people more immediately, increasing numbers of people will come into motion to oppose it. We need to find ways of uniting all those who are antagonistic to capitalism, from various perspectives, and work together to defeat and dismantle it.

Movements for social liberation must ally with movements to defend the natural world, or we won’t be able to achieve either goal. We need a diverse, non-sectarian mass movement that can increase our chances for victory against our common enemy.

If we want to win, we must organize and align our efforts. Individually we’re weak and ineffective; together we are strong.

Let’s build a broad and autonomous movement to fight capitalism, before it destroys us!

From saltyeggs:

Stephanie McMillan: Land Defense and Class Struggle: Building Alliances to Defeat Capitalism

By Stephanie McMillan

Environmental destruction is the most urgent and immediate problem we face. If we don’t solve it, nothing else will matter. I would argue that it’s the principle contradiction of the current period. Through it, the common ruin of contending classes is becoming increasingly likely, but as the economic and ecological crises converge, the possibility of liberation and social transformation also opens up. But only if we organize to make that happen.

The problem is accelerating because of capital’s constant need to expand into new areas. They have entered a period of extreme extraction, on a scale never before seen: fracking, oil from tar sands and deep sea drilling, mountaintop removal. Because of the falling rate of profit, capitalism can never economically catch up with itself and must constantly break through its limits in a vain attempt to resolve its own inherent internal contradiction.

Feudalism and all forms of class society have had internal contradictions that drove them to expand. But capitalism has taken this to a new level, because instead of just requiring more resources to continue existing (to feed an expanding agrarian population, for example), it requires constant growth of production to expand for its own sake. The needs of the population aren’t the point, and commodities aren’t even the point—accumulating surplus-value to expand capital itself is the entire point. This is what pushes it to exceed limits on a scale previously unimaginable.

But we live on a finite planet with physical limits, that are being reached. This is a difference from earlier economic crises. Capitalism is driven to consume everything external to itself, converting it to commodities, and it won’t stop doing so on its own until it kills all life on the planet. Capitalism is fundamentally in contradiction with life itself.

As this problem becomes more acute, and affects people more immediately, more people will come into motion to oppose it. We need to find ways of uniting those who can fight capitalism from both the standpoint of class liberation, and from an environmentalist perspective, or more precisely, biocentrism. Alone, neither can achieve a sustainable and classless future society. These movements are allied and complementary. Each will have different strategies and approaches, but both will have better chances for success the more they cooperate in the immediate period.

Each movement currently has gaps, which are filled in by the other. The major flaw in movements for class liberation has been anthropocentrism, a total focus on human needs and a utilitarian view of nature.

The major flaw of environmentalism (and the contemporary labor movement in the US as well, which has been destroyed or co-opted by sold-out unions) has been a lack of class analysis and a lack of understanding of capitalism as a system that needs to be dismantled, an economic system characterized by class domination and protected by a state that needs to be defeated. Because of this incomplete picture, many fall victim to illusions of reformism, bourgeois democracy, technotopianism, lifestylism, green capitalism, and other dead end schemes.

Many radical or deep green environmentalists get closer to the heart of the problem and fight to defend land and decrease production. These are both necessary, but not alone sufficient. We can not win—we can neither liberate ourselves nor save the planet—without defeating and dismantling the entire system of capitalism and fundamentally transforming the structure of society on a classless basis.

We can attack capitalism on many fronts, but at the center of it is the conversion of raw materials (life) into commodities through the capitalist exploitation of labor. The point is the extraction of surplus value from the worker. There is no other reason for commodities to be produced. So we must break the social relation of class domination that makes exploitation possible, and which characterizes a mode of production that requires the extraction of resources and results in the destruction of the environment.

On the left, the theory of productive forces has led to a widespread productivist/mechanical view of reaching socialism: by developing and fully mechanizing production, we will reach reach abundance and the end of labor itself. It is increasingly obvious that this scenario at odds with the reality around us, yet there is a general reluctance to tell the truth: that a lot of production, everything not necessary for survival, simply has to end. No one likes being the person who brings the bad news that we have to make do with less. It’s harder to organize around.

And so the idea of socialism, the common ownership of the means of production and equitable distribution of goods, also doesn’t go far enough. We need to change our relationship with the natural world. It is not there for us to use, but instead we are part of it and depend on its overall health. We need to define a different relationship with it than as a set of resources. A sustainable economy can only involve production that is subordinate to nature and that fits within its physical limits to reproduce itself—that is determined not by human desires and whims, but by our actual needs, which are dependent on a healthy planet above all.

The system fosters the illusion of a contradiction between the interests of the dominated classes (the working class in particular)—and the ecosystem that we all depend upon for life. Through the dispossession of land-based peoples at its stage of primary accumulation, capitalism creates a situation of dependency for workers, who no longer have access to their own traditional means of subsistence.

This is how they’ve set us up to demand that our needs be satisfied in ways that actually help the enemy and harm ourselves. For example, the demand for jobs is almost unquestioned in the labor movement, but this demand only helps the capitalist to further exploit us at cheaper rates. What we should be demanding is a universal income, which would hinder exploitation, hurt capital, and would be compatible with the ecological necessity of reducing production.

Instead of demanding a temporary job building a pipeline, for example, we need to be insisting on the right to a livable income whether we have a job or not. And if we’re unemployed, we should be spending our time joining those who are putting themselves on the line to stand in the way of oil pipelines, mountaintop removal, and nuclear power plants – such as the five Lakotas who were arrested a couple of weeks ago for participating in a successful community blockade of trucks that were coming onto Pine Ridge Indian land in South Dakota with materials for building the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.

We must build organizations that bring to bear the energy and interests of all the popular classes and social groupings against capitalism. For reds, a major task is to build autonomous organizations of the working class to break capitalists’ ability to accumulate surplus value. In addition, capital should be blocked at the various points in its flow, and alliances are needed to build mass movements that can attack capitalism at each of these points—including and especially (as the ecological crisis becomes increasingly acute), defending the land by preventing extraction.

Indigenous struggles, in particular, need to be supported and allied with as part of any anti-capitalist initiative. For one thing, it must be acknowledged and addressed that the land that provides all our sustenance has been stolen and colonized. Furthermore, indigenous peoples and subsistence farmers are the only groups who have practice with living sustainably, who can offer alternatives to this way of life that have been proven successful.

The extraction of resources and the exploitation of labor could not even occur without dispossessing people of the land that previously sustained them, a dispossession that continues and a subsequent degradation that has accelerated to an apocalyptic rate. These economic processes are intertwined, mutually compulsory, defining elements of capitalist production, and a combined effort to stop both have a much better chance of defeating our common enemy.

From Press Action: http://web.archive.org/web/20130419191311/http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mcmillan03202012/